philipstraatsma.com

Simply a must learn for any CCNA candidate. When time is your enemy on the exam this method is your best friend:

http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le31/le46/cln/clp/fastlane/Subnet_Calculator/index2.htm

I am going through the Boson ICND2 practice exam questions and marking sections I failed to answer questions correctly for follow up. Here is what we have so far:

Chapter 2: Spanning Tree: Root Bridge, Root Port and Designated Port Elections.

Chapter 10: EIGRP Metric, Successors, and Feasible Successors.

update: rescheduled for sometime in September after Straatsma baby 2.0 is born.

I don’t know about you but when I am learning concepts for the first time, the general idea seems to stick but no necessarily the specific details. I typically like to cover these details in-depth over the weekend right before the test. So here is my current list of topics I want to review with a fine toothed comb.

OSPF route summarization

EIGRP route summarization (auto?)

Troubleshooting IP routing

Troubleshooting routing protocols

Frame-relay configuration

Network address Translation

IPv6

(update: all sections completed)

I’ve completed the CBTnuggets.com training section twice now and and past halfway in the Wendell Odom ICND2 cert book and I am feeling really good about the materials covered so far. I have the same sense of clarity with the topics fully covered in the book so far (vlans, stp, vtp, vlsm, access-control lists and route/switch trouble-shooting) as I did before taking (and passing) the last certification. I scheduled the test for August 8th which leaves me just under two weeks to go and a bunch of topics to fully cover, including OSPF, EIGRP, point to point link, frame-relay, VPNs and ipv6 plus my final prep.

Studying for the CCNA ICND2 exam has moved into the final countdown, with only 3 weeks to go until the test. Up until this point I have focused on each concept as it has come up and not really thought about all the concepts covered on the ICND2 exam. Well, the sheer amount of content hit me like a ton of bricks tonight. I can’t believe how much information is covered in this exam. You could seriously split the exam in two with routing as one test and switching as another and they would still be two beefy exams. Though, to be honest, I felt this exact same way about ICND1 at about this time and did not have any issues passing the exam, so here’s to hoping the same applies to ICND2.

Anyway, tonights topic was the Open Shortest Path First (OSPF) routing protocol. Commonly used as a replacement to EIGRP for those networks not running cisco equipment. OSPF is a link state protocol with each router forming a map of the network. OSPF uses the Hello protocol to inform its neighbors about the routes it knows and periodically letting it’s neighbors know that it is still up and running. This is much more efficient than a distance vector protocol, such as RIP, which advertises it’s entire routing table with each broadcast.

I had a chat with one of our network engineers a couple of days ago regarding the path of understanding your brain seems to take while studying for a Cisco exam. The first time you go through the information your brain says, “that’s cool I get the general concept, but I don’t think I could flawlessly implement it without having to look some things up”. The second time through goes something like this, “ok, I understand this stuff and I think I can implement it without breaking things horribly”.  The last time through, two weeks before the exam, “I understand this information, quick take the test while the nitty-gritty details stick!”. And finally, when you move on to another more difficult test you look back on the old stuff and think, “I remember when ICND2 stuff used to be hard, what have I gotten myself into now!”.

Speaking of studying, here is a quick run down of where I am with the ICND2 exam prep:

In the past couple of weeks I finished up the cbtnuggets ICND2 course for the first time. Similar to studying for the ICND1 exam I am making a second run through the content on cbtnuggets.com, at this point I just finished covering the switching part of the cbt course material. Once I am done with CBT for the second time I will hit the cisco press book for the ICND2 exam until I take the test.